Tire Pressure Monitoring System

After I removed spare wheel and drove around, it started acting up, including throwing a dash error. Using 'add new wheel set' option temporarily fixed this, but now pressures do not come up. I took it to the dealer, but they are gas-lighting me that this is normal. I had other cars with TPMS and pressures are instant on start-up. I think TPMS module is malfuctioning, but it is possible that a garage that installed my winter tires on take-off rims used wrong sensors (they told me they ordered it from Toyota).

Q1: How long does it take for your 4R to show tire pressures after startup?
Q2: Does it show pressures after the car sat?

 

Q1) According to the manual, it can take 10-15 minutes or 40 miles. (I'm paraphrasing, so don't flame me if I'm a bit off).
Q2) What do you mean 'sat'? Do you mean if it sat in a garage for 2 - 4 weeks and never ran? If that's your question, then yes. it shows pressure. See the answer above to find out how long it'll take to register and display a reading.

 

I had trouble with this too; Discount Tire said they had done it, but really it was just still reading my old tires & wheels that were in the back of the car. I reset ("change wheel set") from the dash and expected it to register them quickly, but it didn't. But when I looked in the manual, it's even weirder than @Borracho Loco says:

Drive straight (with occasional left and right turns) at approximately 25 mph (40 km/h) or more for approximately 10 to 30 minutes.
[...]
Initialization may take longer than approximately 1 hour in certain situations, such as when the vehicle is stopped for a long time at traffic lights, etc.

So I had driven home for 30 minutes, but that wasn't enough. I had to find a place where I could drive slowly for a long while, and then they showed up. It also suggests that to be calibrated correctly, you then need to get each tire to the correct pressure and reset that too:

Make sure to adjust the tire pressure to the specified cold tire inflation pressure level. The tire pressure warning system will operate based on this pressure level.

So then you have to reset again (using set pressure, not change wheel set), and do another 25 mph drive for 30 minutes! So they want you to drive for an hour to do this...

I wasn't really expecting either of these - I feel like all of my other cars just worked.

 

Although there are some extra steps, they do provide some extra capability. 4R drivers seem to switch between tire sets more often than most, and more importantly, they operate at different pressure levels according to conditions. Being able to switch set points reduces misleading warning lights. In practice, the stated procedure isn't all that critical. Just drive around and everything will work out before long.

 

I just rotated my tires. I drove 30 miles from my dad's house where I rotated them and they still didn't register. When I got in the car the next day to go to work, the TPMS light was on and it was still calibrating while going to work. It finally registered them all on my drive-in to work. Sometimes it just takes a while to register.

 

Took a good 75 miles of highway driving for my TPMS system to finally pick up on the new sensors.

 

Are you saying that you removed the spare tire from underneath the car also? If so, the Limited trims need all 5 sensors to read or it will throw an error.

 

It’s easier just to get a pressure gauge and check them occasionally. TPMS never has worked for me

 

Does your tire pressure gauge tell you that a tire is going flat and you need to stop and change it before you destroy the tire?

 

You can get that information from sound and handling. People avoided destroying tires for a long time before we had TPMS.

 

Highway driving, true...in some cases. On dirt roads where the tires are already aired down a bit, nope. I invite you to drive some of our back roads here in Nevada and see all the tire carcasses along the road where the tire was destroyed before the driver realized there was a problem. I carry 2 spares on most of my rigs; I see some of the ranch and mine trucks carry 3. Flat tires are a fact of life out here and TPMS warnings allow us to stop and change the tire before the sidewall or even rim is destroyed.

 

I've been driving for 48 years. I've been some places and done some things. I'm not arguing that TPMS isn't useful, I even explained above why it's helpful to reset for different pressures. However, I don't think the reset time is a big deal. It should also be noted that the effective reset time varies quite a bit. Sometimes it's much faster than the OP indicated.

 

Yes, this was my first experience with it after my first tire rotation. It registered in like 3 minutes. The last two times they have taken longer to register.

 

Oh my I never thought of that

 

The last time I rotated it took over a week to register again. I’ve learned to live with it after rotation or tire change